The Season My Body Demanded I Listen

It started quietly.
A little swelling around my eyes.
A rash on my hand.
Really tired.
Trouble focusing.

I told myself it was allergies.
Maybe a cream. Maybe the humid Costa Rican air.

I went to the doctor. Tried creams, antihistamines, elimination diets. Sometimes the flare would calm down and I’d think, finally, it’s gone.

But it always came back.
First my neck. Then my face.
Until one day, I was swollen, red, and itchy from my eyes to my chest, crying in bed, desperate for relief, and feeling utterly helpless.

Meanwhile, my hands had been blistered and peeling for almost a year. My gut was unsettled. I was gaining weight. My focus and energy were flat. I kept pushing forward, telling myself it was just the climate.

But the truth? I wasn’t completely ignoring my body.
I saw what was happening. I didn’t like it. I knew something was off.
But aside from surface fixes, I wasn’t doing much to support it.

And in the end, that was still a kind of ignoring, because I was noticing the signals but not giving them what they truly needed.

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The Wild Middle

This is The Wild Middle.
The season of life where you can no longer outrun your body.
Where the old coping strategies stop working.
Where you look around and realize: I can’t just keep absorbing this. I have to figure out what’s really going on.

And even more, I have to figure out who I am in this season of life.

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Facing the Results

So I reached out to my functional medicine doctor in Canada.
We ordered a GI-MAP and a Dutch hormone test.

And the results were… sobering.

My DHEA, the “vitality hormone” that buffers stress and supports resilience, was nearly at zero. My levels looked like those of a 60–70-year-old woman. No wonder I felt like my spark had dimmed.

Progesterone was low, leaving my brain without enough calming GABA to sleep deeply or feel steady. Estrogen was louder, unbuffered by progesterone, amplifying histamine and gut reactivity. Cortisol rhythm was off, leaving me flat when I needed energy and wired when I needed rest.

My GI-MAP showed more than “just a gut imbalance.”
I had two very serious bacterial overgrowths, low enzymes, low immune function (sIgA, the gut’s first line of defense), and a gut lining under siege.
No wonder I was inflamed, exhausted, and reacting to everything.

When I shared the results with my doctor, he told me something that stopped me in my tracks:
The only reason I was still functioning in daily life, despite these levels, was because of my intentional nervous system work.

Without it, I would have been completely flattened.

And the hardest part? The gut and hormone issues weren’t separate. They were feeding each other in a loop. Gut stress was driving histamine higher and draining my adrenals. That meant less DHEA, less progesterone, more estrogen dominance. And those hormone shifts, in turn, made my gut more reactive.

A cycle of flares, fatigue, and survival.

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The Cycle of Survival

Seeing it all in black and white was shocking.
At first, I was in disbelief. How could I have been living like this?

And yet, oddly, I felt a sense of relief. I felt validated.
Finally, there was proof. I wasn’t imagining it. There was an explanation.

It also explained the foggy place I had been living from. The way I was mostly wishing and hoping it would just sort itself out, instead of taking real action. A strategy that worked in the past. My body had been waving a red flag, and I kept tucking it away.

But the truth was, I’d been running on empty for a long time.

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Shifting in The Wild Middle

And here’s what I’ve come to realize:

The Wild Middle is designed to make you shift.

If your nervous system is supported, it can feel like empowerment, a reawakening.
If your body is depleted, it feels like chaos, survival mode, fatigue, a loss of spark.

For me, it’s been all of it.

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Mentally

Low DHEA and cortisol rhythm → brain fog, low motivation, flat mood, difficulty handling stress.
Low progesterone → less calming GABA in my brain → more irritability, more anxiety, less sleep.
Histamine overload from gut bugs and estrogen dominance → racing thoughts, agitation, reactivity.
It feels like: “I know who I am, but my brain won’t cooperate.”

Spiritually

When your nervous system is constantly on alert, it’s hard to feel safe enough to open to intuition or higher guidance.
Low DHEA, the vitality hormone, left me feeling like my inner spark had dimmed.
Low progesterone weakened my sense of trust and surrender, like I was carrying everything alone.
Chronic gut stress made me feel “under siege,” blocking the openness I usually feel.
It feels like: “I know my soul is calling me to expand, but my body feels stuck in survival.”

Physically

Weight resistance. Bloating. Fatigue. Skin flares. Poor sleep.
A body holding on for protection, not because it’s broken, but because it doesn’t yet feel safe to release.
Weakened gut immunity made me more vulnerable to food triggers and infections.
Low enzymes meant I wasn’t breaking down or absorbing nutrients.
It feels like: “No matter what, my body doesn’t respond or release.”

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Where I Am Now

I’m still in it. Still recalibrating. Still listening.

I just got these results a few weeks ago. The protocols have started: mitochondrial support, detox blends, herbal support, gut balancers. Prepping the body. Next comes addressing the bacterial overgrowths, rebuilding enzymes, restoring adrenal function, and crucially, raising my DHEA.

I’ll never forget reading that DHEA is called the vitality hormone. Tears came to my eyes. Vitality. Vibrancy. Yes — THAT, I want that back.

Each phase takes weeks to months. This isn’t a quick fix. It’s a long road of healing and rebuilding.

Through it all, I’ve been tending my nervous system daily: EFT tapping, meditation, writing, grounding practices, gentler rhythms. The smallest return of symptoms can trigger fear * oh no, what if this is another full flare? * because my body has been in a very intense histamine response that just hasn’t turned off. So I’ve had to learn to quiet my body’s alarm before it spirals back into defense.

And at the same time, I’m getting clearer on myself. On what I want for my life. On the bigger vision I’m stepping into. But here’s the truth: my body hasn’t been meeting me there. It feels like it’s holding me back.

What I’m learning, though, is that it isn’t blocking me. It’s asking me to support it so it can align with where I’m going. We have to work together.

And this is exactly what I hold space for in my work, helping women navigate their own Wild Middle, not by overriding their bodies but by rebuilding safety, capacity, and vitality.

And that has me asking new questions:
How good can it get? What will my vitality feel like when it returns? Where do I want to channel that energy? What do I actually want to create, to live, to experience, once my body is no longer in survival mode?

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Listening Differently

I wish I could end this with a neat ribbon, here’s what I did, here’s how I feel now.

But that’s not the truth.

The truth is: I’m still in it. The labs are fresh, the protocols are just beginning. I don’t know yet how it will all unfold.

What I do know is this: I’m listening differently now.
I’m not ignoring anymore.
And maybe that’s where vitality begins.

This is The Wild Middle.
And it’s asking me to finally honor what my body has been telling me all along — and to discover who I really am in this season of life. If you want to join me in this, let’s explore inside The Hive https://app.paperbell.com/checkout/packages/121685

Xo, Ashley